On Sept. 5, 7,386 acres of land burned because of a gender reveal party in El Dorado Ranch, Calif. sparking from a pyrotechnic device. The wildfire spread north to the Yucaipa Ridge, and residents there were forced to evacuate quickly. 

This is not the first fire sparked by a party decorated with either pink or blue. In April 2017, a father in Arizona fired a bullet into a target full of colorful explosives and started a wildfire in Saw Mill which burned 47,000 acres of land. 

In Oct. 2019, a gender reveal party in Iowa decided to celebrate with a homemade pipe bomb full of colorful gunpowder. The explosion killed 56 year old Pamela Kreimeyer, whose head was struck by a piece of metal. 

These are just a few examples of parties that went horribly wrong for the sake of figuring out a baby’s gender. They reveal the unnecessary extent that parents go to announce their future child’s gender. 

What this party, and several others like it, keep illuminating (other than the acres and acres of burned land) are  gender stereotypes — blue for boys and the pink for girls. This way of thinking is slowly being grown out of as gender is being recognized as more fluid and colorful.

These parties have attracted more and more attention as they grew from colored frosting in a cake to fireworks and bombs. The things people do to announce their child’s gender and assigned interests are quite deafening and really unnecessary. 

Although gender reveal parties are set with good intentions from expecting parents, a new way of thinking needs to be instilled so that children can be raised with a more open mind about gender expression and roles. Thinking in black and white is over, especially with the rainbow of colors that decorate the possibilities of expression and being. 

Assuming these types of things, from sexual orientation to attraction and expression, has become outdated. How can people today think it’s okay to dedicate a party to their own assumptions on what their future child will like, and what will be acceptable for them to conform to? 

If anything, the fires that have incinerated these parties are a sign that what they stand for is dangerous. Some things just need to be burned, and putting genders in boxes is one of them.